1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computerized methods for testing and tracking and, more particularly, to novel systems and methods for testing, tracking, and correcting defects in software or hardware systems arising from faulty programming, faulty manufacture, inappropriate and invasive programming, or artificially forced obsolescence of computer system hardware and software.
2. Background
Product development cycles have become shorter and shorter. More of the responsibility for testing and “debugging” products falls to the actual beta testers or alpha testers. Nevertheless, products are continuing their development cycle well into their marketing bases.
For example, software is often released for public purchase before the known errors from beta testing have been cured. Hardware is often likewise premature, and more difficult to correct. Alternatively, beta testing may be inadequate, leaving various problems extant within either hardware, software, or a combination thereof.
Purchasers are often left with a need for identification and cure of errors in commercially available software and hardware. In some instances, product manufacturers and suppliers actively solicit comments, improvements, detection and identification of errors, and the like. In other situations, manufacturers and marketers of products are not so forthcoming. For example, occasionally, problems are comparatively esoteric, and may occur only in a few rare conditions or instances. Nevertheless, some errors occur with sufficient regularity as to seriously encumber users unaware of the existence of such product flaws.
In recent years, computer and software manufacturers have been repeatedly surprised, even amazed, at the groundswell of opposition to products that are not adequately tested, supported, corrected, recalled, or otherwise identified as having correctable flaws.
Software, in particular, has arrived at a new threshold of pain for purchasers and users. Never since the advent of government agencies for consumer protection against fraud, product failure, product inadequacy, manufacturer non-responsiveness, and the like, have so many dollars of product value been subject to such massive amounts of owner and operator time in order to obtain the purported benefits of the products.
Some manufacturers are swift to seek out and post notification of errors existing in their products. Typically, errors are identified, with associated patches for correcting the errors. In some cases, products are recalled. With the advent of the world wide web, a host of users may provide a corresponding host of error corrections, all freely available to users interested in improving the performance or reliability of a purchased software or hardware product in the computer industry.
Historically, a manufacturer or other purveyor of a computer-related product may face a dilemma with respect to certain product flaws. To the extent that an error, built into or programmed into a computer-related product, is comparatively esoteric and unlikely to cause problems for the majority of users, a manufacturer or developer may prefer to ignore it. To the extent that such a flaw or error is ubiquitous and likely to cause pervasive and obvious problems, a manufacturer may prefer to cure the problem. Similarly, to the extent that a problem is likely to cause a comparatively small disruption of promised service, a manufacturer may choose to ignore it. Alternatively, to the extent that a problem is likely to cause serious economic damages to a commercial or industrial user of a software product or physical damage to persons or property as a direct result of the failure of a computer-based product, a manufacturer will take appropriate steps to find a correction to the problem, announce the presence of the flaw and the availability of a corrective measure, and seek to bring all copies of the product into compliance with a corrected version thereof.
Nevertheless, product improvement is largely a matter of motivation. Motivation may arise from personal interest, individual or enterprise-wide frustration, desirability of a result, previous experiences and expectations, and the like. In current process for product improvement, little incentive exists to provide for skilled third parties to improve marketed products. By the same token, manufacturers, whether large or small, may have limited motivation, resources, or the like to locate and correct errors. In fact, a certain motivation may exist to not seek out errors, nor to highlight them, nor even to repair them, in many instances.
What is needed is a mechanism, whereby software and hardware products related to computer systems may be improved profitably by third parties. Likewise, what is needed is an apparatus and method for consistently providing the necessary resources for testing, correction, notification, and product redistribution for products and upgrades related to computer-related based products, whether software or hardware.
Other difficulties with software originate from purveyors and producers of “invasive software”. Invasive software typically provides various opportunities for the developers or sellers of software to obtain information from a computer of a user. For example, “cookies” are commonly understood data structures that hold certain user identification information that may be useful to a software supplier. The proliferation of cookies has become epidemic. Many users are unaware of the number of cookies being used by software and relied upon by software vendors. Likewise, users are less aware of the frequent Internet contacts made to transfer information from cookies back to central computers owned by parties other than the software users.
New licensing language in certain software actually requests of users to provide sweeping authorization for software providers to install over the Internet certain software extraneous to the principal offer of purchase. The software license asks consent for the purpose of collecting whatever information the seller or manufacturer chooses. These various types of invasive software may include reporters that report information back that users may not be aware is being reported back. Moreover, such software installation done extraneously to the basic software installation may even be as aggressive as moles that execute searching functions to determine information on the user's computer in order to report that information back to the software installer, vendor, or producer.
Moreover, many professional organizations such as corporations, government bodies, government regulatory agencies, administrative agencies, educational organizations, health maintenance organizations, medical practices, insurance companies, financial institutions, law offices, and the like, maintain, as a matter of course, extremely sensitive, proprietary, and confidential information. That information is not properly disclosed to third parties.
Third-party software installations or licenses request of a software user the broad sweeping right to install cookies, reporters, or moles. Such installations may be imposed over the Internet, or from installation software initially, and the confidential information of clients and customers may thus be compromised. A software user may therefore be liable for the breach of confidentiality. Meanwhile, the software originally installed, which may have given rise to the subsequent or concurrent installation of spurious invasive software, has breached and caused the software user to breach duties to clients and customers.
A system and method are needed to remedy these breaches, and to hold accountable those who perpetrate through form contracts and licenses broad, overreaching purported rights to install invasive software on the system of a user and to obtain thereby confidential information of the user or customer and clients of a user.
Other difficulties may arise when a manufacturer or other entity artificially forces obsolescence on selected computer hardware components, thereby forcing a consumer to needlessly upgrade to newer components. For example, a CPU, also known as a processor, is the processing center of a computer system. A check CPU may be designed with a collection of machine language instructions, or instruction set, that the processor understands and follows. Program code, developed to perform a desired task, must ultimately perform its various functions and routines using the instruction set of the processor on which it is processed. As CPU manufacturers, such as Intel, have released newer and faster processor architectures, one hallmark of their evolution and design has been backward compatibility, meaning that newer chips will execute the instruction set of previous processors. However, program code written for newer architectures may not run on the older processors, since new instructions may be utilized. In some cases, the instruction set of a new CPU architecture may only include a few new instructions as compared to its predecessor.
For example, the Intel 80486 (the 486) processor architecture added 6 new instructions to extend its Intel 80386 (the 386) instruction set core. Likewise, the Intel Pentium added 8 new instructions to its 486 instruction set core. In some cases, software may utilize the new instructions, and therefore, not run on older processors. These new instructions, if encountered by an older processor, may incur errors in the operation thereof, and may cause a system shutdown or the like.
As new instructions are added, some software may check the characteristics, such as clock speed, architecture, and the like, of the processor on which it is running. Certain instructions, when executed, simply identify selected characteristics of the processor. These characteristics may be used like flags by the software to decide whether to proceed with execution or to modify execution in some way. For example, the CPUID instruction, introduced to the core instruction set in upgraded processors, may return the values of certain characteristics of a given processor. Some processors may not support this instruction and incur errors when encountered thereby.
Installation programs, used to install many software applications, may check the characteristics of a processor and require that a computer meet a pre-selected set of requirements. For example, a purchased software package may state on its packaging a minimum CPU architecture, clock speed, RAM requirements, and secondary storage (disk capacity) requirements to operate the software. If these minimum system requirements are not met, the installation program may abort the installation process and prevent a user from installing the desired software.
Some software manufacturers may justify this action in order to ensure that a software package performs at what the manufacturer considers a satisfactory level. Unfortunately, some requirements may be artificially imposed. That is, a program may actually run at a satisfactory performance level, as deemed by a user of a computer system, but the user may be prevented from installing and running the software because the manufacturer has artificially locked out selected computer systems. In a sense, the manufacturer of the software has forced obsolescence of the computer system, as in the case of Microsoft and the Windows operating system. This may require a user to unnecessarily upgrade or purchase a new computer system, satisfying the requirements, incurring unneeded frustration, effort, collateral programming, and expense to the user.
In accordance with the issues and problems described hereinbefore, what is needed is a software solution, whereby an older processor may emulate a newer processor's extended features without incurring a significant performance penalty, thereby eliminating the need to unnecessarily upgrade to a newer processor or computer system to host newer operating systems and software.
Alternatively, in cases where hardware-dependent software locks artificially prevent the installation of software, thereby needlessly forcing obsolescence on selected hardware components, what are needed are apparatus and methods to circumvent these locks to allow the proper installation and operation of the subject software.
What is further needed is a software solution to make an older processor indistinguishable from a newer processor or a CPU upgrade to substantially all software accessed thereby, providing the same features and functionality.
What is further needed is a method to effectively “weld” such a software solution to an older processor, in order to mediate and monitor all access and use of the processor.
What is further needed is a system and method for preventing and defeating the installation of unwarranted, unwanted, or undesirable software executables and data structures on computers of users. Defeating cookies, reporters, and moles may be a high priority for various parties owning sensitive proprietary information.